Huawei P20 Complete Review With Specs

Short History Of Huawei

Huawei is one of those companies that is familiar to many consumers only superficially. Before the advent of the sale of smartphones about this brand knew only specialists. This is explained by the fact that the main business of the Chinese enterprise is the production of cell towers and other communication equipment. This is well illustrated by the history of the company.

Huawei P20 Review

Huawei P20 – the new flagship smartphone of the Chinese company, which was presented on March 27, 2018. The novelty, following the philosophy of the series, received a stylish design and a new generation of cameras. At what in comparison with the predecessors of the update are significant enough. The technical component, like software, paired with elements of AI and machine learning, is at an appropriate level. Also, the Huawei P20 Pro smartphone was even more advanced in terms of photo capabilities.

General Information

The P20 has its own distinctive features from the “junior” models. For example, small cutouts at the top of the display, updated cameras. The P20 Pro received 3 main cameras, which greatly surprised potential customers.

The cameras of new smartphones are supplemented with a 4D-focusing system, with which you can quickly grasp moving objects. The manufacturer promises that AI will help in choosing the right composition of the photo. Cameras of mobile devices will make sharp night shots without a tripod.

The P20 smartphone was built, like other novelties, on the SoC Kirin 970. In these models, the NPU’s capabilities are used to improve the quality of telephone conversations.

Huawei P20 Design And Display

The design of Huawei’s flagship has changed a lot since the last iteration of the phone. Now it boasts a glass of the rear panel, which, in our opinion, makes it less premium than the all-metal P10, but in the hands of high quality it feels unmistakable.

The edges of the smartphone are metal, the glass curves to these edges, so it seems that the smartphone is much better in the palm of your hand than other phones, in particular, the Huawei P10.

Display format 18.7: 9 is similar to most screens of flagship smartphones in 2018, at the top of the screen there is a cutout. An interesting feature that we did not mention on other phones with a clipped screen is that you can easily enable or disable the display notch support.

By default, the button is turned on and looks the same as on other flagships, including the iPhone X and ASUS Zenfone 5: it opens on the screen, giving the user hours and notifications on both sides.

Turning off this function will hide the function button. Time and notifications will be displayed in the same place, but visually the groove will disappear – you will lose a little in terms of the working area of the screen, but many users prefer flat lines of the image from the top/side of the screen.

The 5.8-inch LCD is not as good as the 6.1-inch OLED on the P20 Pro, but it still has a fairly high resolution of 2244 x 1080 pixels. This is only FHD resolution, so do not wait for the stunning image of the flagships of Samsung or Sony, however, the display is still sharp, enough to match the flagship product

Huawei tries to hide the display panel, but at the bottom of the phone, there is a thick black bar in which the fingerprint scanner is located. We believe that it was more expedient to move the scanner to the back panel (as on Huawei P20 Lite), increasing the aesthetic appeal of the front of the phone and the useful area of the screen.

Another interesting solution is the lack of a 3.5-mm headphone jack on the Huawei P20. Even the large P20 Pro has lost the headphone jack, but this smartphone has a rating of IP67, meaning you can put the phone in water, which requires you to get rid of the headphone jack for waterproofing.

However, the P20 rating is only IP53, so it is not waterproof and there seems to be no reason to cut the headphone jack out of the case. If you want to use a wired headset with a phone, you’ll need to use an adapter that plugs into the USB-C port at the bottom of the phone.

The choice of colors is presented in black, gold, blue, pink gold and twilight. The last two colors use what the company calls the gradient effect – they offer a whole range of colors that vary depending on the lighting and angle of view, which provides a unique look.

The colors of the Huawei P20 certainly look great and seem especially bold if you are one of those users that like to stand out.

Design And Ergonomics

In terms of design, the Huawei P20 is a glass sandwich with a metal frame. Glass flows into metal, which contributes to ergonomics. Pure symmetry from all sides. The logo behind is located from the bottom-up so that the user feels as if holding a professional camera. When creating one of the color variants of the case, Twilight, a gradient was used, which shimmers in different shades. The so-called fringe or monobloc located at the top of the screen was minimized to display a large number of notification icons. This cut-out contains a camera, a brightness sensor, and a speaker.

In Huawei P20, the front fingerprint scanner is used as a navigation button: short touchback, long – home, svayp – multitasking. To unlock it, you can also use the pre-installed 360-degree face unlock even in the dark in just 0.6 seconds. According to the manufacturer, it was for this function that the bangs were installed. On the left, there is a tray for 2 SIM-cards with support for Dual 4G and Dual VoLTE, and 4×4 MIMO antennas are used for receiving signals. Huawei P20 is splash-proof in accordance with the IP53 standard.

Cameras Of Huawei P20

The new Leica camera, installed in the Huawei P20, comes with a pixel size of 1.55 microns, a f / 1.8 aperture for a 12-megapixel color sensor and a f / 1.6 aperture of a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor. Frontalka received a 24 megapixel CMOS sensor, which will give an incredible detail of self-portraits through 3D-recognition, and with the help of AI, the analysis of face and light deficiencies will be carried out for the subsequent improvement of the picture. Also, there is 3D portrait lighting with unique light studio effects, simulating professional photography at the studio.

Nevertheless, the camera was very good already on the Huawei P10, so small software improvements should improve the overall quality of the survey. The hardware is also slightly upgraded, especially in the diaphragm compartment.

Currently, the camera also offers Slow Motion at 960 frames per second, recording at 720p, but while the technology worked well, it was difficult for us to capture the slow-motion video in time. The window is extremely small since you pressed the button, you need to withstand the time perfectly to get a spectacular record.

This critique was awarded to many smartphones with Slow Motion technology, which we tested, but in this case, the video is very limited when you connect this function.

The camera is also slightly inferior to the best sensors in the category of Slow Motion, given that the latest Sony smartphones can write at a speed of 960 frames per second in 1080p resolution. If you are looking for a smartphone with a good slow-motion mode, you probably want to take a look at the latest Sony phones.

On the front panel of the Huawei P20, you will find a huge 24-megapixel sensor that can capture the exquisite details of every pore, pimple and other facial details that you probably do not want to share on social networks.

Technical Stuffing

Most of the front panel of the Huawei P20 is occupied by 5.8-inch RGBW FullView display with Full HD + resolution and brightness of 770 nits (23% brighter than the iPhone X), which allows it not to get blind even with direct sunlight. There is support for natural colors, which is designed to save the eyesight and reduce contrast, saturation in the dark, translating everything into almost black and white mode.

Due to the cutout, the aspect ratio was increased to 18.7: 9. Inside there is an 8-core Kirin 970, 4 GB of RAM and a flash drive for 128 GB without the option for expansion. Despite its thickness of 7.65 mm, the manufacturer has housed a battery with a capacity of 3,400 mAh inside. For comparison, the iPhone X at 7.7 mm has a battery of 2 716 mAh, Samsung Galaxy S9 at 8.4 mm – 3 000 mAh.

Huawei P20 Characteristics And Performance

Under the hood of the Huawei P20, the newest Kirin 970 chipset from the manufacturer, which was previously introduced in the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, is hiding and proved itself well in testing.

The chipset includes a neuromorphic processor, and this is one of the most important moments in the advertising company Huawei for the P20, as it supplies the phone with artificial intelligence. This means that the smartphone better predicts your actions before you request them.

The simplest explanation is the automatic camera mode. For example, if you are pointing the camera at a dog, the camera will understand that you are shooting the animal, automatically defeating the settings to optimize the camera for shooting animals.

All this works with the support of 4 GB of RAM, which should be more than enough for most tasks, although less than 6 GB inside the P20 Pro.

P20 is running Android 8.1 Oreo but under its own interface Emotion 8.1 from Huawei. This means that the interface is different from many other Android phones, but you get all the features that you usually get with the latest version of Android, as well as some Huawei solutions, including Share for companies, which allows you to transfer files between your smartphone and PC.

The P20 comes with a large memory margin of 128 GB – there are no other options. It’s amazing that Huawei decided to abandon the 16/32 GB and 64 GB models for the flagship, but there is no microSD support if you want even more space for applications and media files.

The P20 battery has a capacity of 3400 mAh. Huawei’s own quick charging technology ensures that you do not have to charge your phone too long if you are in a hurry.

Speaker, sound quality

The audio component without frills, but at a consistently high level. The conversation part of the confident five – even a lively flow of people and cars on the street will not prevent you from hearing and conveying all the necessary information to the interlocutor.

With the musical component, it’s more and more difficult – and the speaker, and even more so the headset is able to accurately and accurately transmit the sound, but frankly, there are no upper and lower frequencies, so you cannot replace both the camera and the audio player at the same time. On the other hand, if you delve into the settings and the equalizer, to achieve results that satisfy even the most demanding taste is still real.

Battery

The battery does not impress the imagination with its capacity, but it is more than enough for a whole day of active interaction with the smartphone. If you prefer to use it only for the connection of irregular activities like web surfing and watching videos, then for two days it will last without much effort.

Despite the large display with phenomenal technical characteristics, the device is kept long thanks to excellent optimization. Even the proprietary shell on top of Android does not waste unnecessary battery resources, and so you can forget about the convulsive search for the outlet in the middle of the working day.

Communication and Internet

The set of wireless interfaces is more than standard, but in a flagship situation it can not be otherwise – two-frequency Wi-Fi, NFC, fresh Bluetooth and then on the list. The smartphone does not impose any limitations on you, but it is always pleasant.

With navigation systems here as complete order, the cold response of GPS and GLONASS takes no more than one second, and the number of always available satellites and the accuracy of determining the location of issues and complaints do not cause.

The Review

Review Breakdown

Syed Arslan is a senior review and News writer at 1review2day, focusing on upcoming smart devices. He previously worked for Fortune Magazine, and he has 3 years of experience. He loves testing out new gadgets and complaining about them. He is the ghost of all failed Kickstarters. Email at syedarslan@1review2day.comRead more...